Apprentice Time
by Mr. Bluu
Summary: A hundred-year-old Finn gets a visitor to the treehouse at dusk.


" _Come along with meee . . ."_ echoes across Ooo's grasslands in a deep, melodic baritone, playfully elbowing in the ribs every blade of grass, every wasp and cloud and warble of sunlight. The endless hip-cambers of hills are silent in the late afternoon, only the stirrings of grasshoppers and dragonflies accompanying the sigh-worthy beauty of the sinking sun. Finn Mertens strokes his long, white beard between verses, banjo still for a moment as he contemplates that fiery orb in the aging day's sky. Soon night'll fall. Just one more sign of the march of progress, Finn supposes. Times are a'changing, just like the sky. He's had to say goodbye to more than a few friends.

Dogs and candy don't last forever. Even fire goes out sometime.

But when night comes around, it's always temporary. The sun's always coming back sometime. Maybe Ooo's just in the night right now. Maybe the sunrise is just round the corner, and he'll see everyone again. Jake would call it all "part of the journey" or something. Finn's lined face curls in a reminiscent smile.

The times might be changing, night might be the trend, but the sun looks awful pretty right now.

" _And the butterflies and beeees,"_ the old man continues, propping his feet up on the lip of the boat that rested high in an ancient treehouse full of memories and the smell of bacon pancakes. The banjo keeps twanging and hollowing out of the evening a soft little tune that harkens back to a bygone age. Finn had long ago stopped trying to give that time in his life a label; _good_ or _bad_ or whatever just didn't feel right. It wasn't any of those. He'd had his share of broken hearts and good times and being thunderstruck by a beautiful dame and the sting of failure.

He supposes it was simplicity, like that lovely sun to his right or how nicely it lit up the spires of the Candy Kingdom way out in the distance. It was _childhood_ , running through the grass with your dog in a summer that lasts forever, without some of the hard questions life makes you ask.

Or maybe he had it all wrong. He was over a hundred, after all. What did he know about childhood anymore? Maybe it was just that really specific feeling that was hard to describe, the one that Music Hole had written this song about?

" _We can wander through the forest, and do so as we pleassssse . . ."_

Finn hears the soft, pitter-patter of tiny metal feet on tree branches, and then his wizened old voice is joined by the eternal youth of a small machine with a great heart.

" _Come along with meee,"_ sing Finn and BMO in unison.

" _To a cliff under a treee. . ."_

" _Where we can gaze upon the waterrr. . ."_

" _As an everlasting dreammm. . ."_

Finn's instrument strums a few final high notes, and the sun dips low enough over the horizon that even the treehouse's tallest tips fade into slight, blue static.

"Ey, Bs," Finn said. "What's up? You missed a rad sunset."

"You know I always come to sing with you, Finn!" The gaming console replied, its voice buzzing with peculiar accent. "And I told you, you don't get to sing my dame's song without me!"

"Yeah," Finn trails off, as BMO whispered something to itself. "I forgot you and Music Hole started goin' steady. It's all a big bad mud puddle nowadays. . ."

"OH!" BMO exclaimed, slapping its hands against 8-bit cheeks. "Maybe I forget stuff too! Somebody down on the ground wants to see you."

Finn craned his neck over the side of the boat. A wince passes from his lips as the ancient muscles in his neck bended in ways some of them were too frayed to do any longer without hurting. All that greeted him in the many-meter space of open air between he and BMO and the ground was undefinable darkness. The sun was nearly gone.

"Man, stop pulling me around!" The old man laughed. "I don't see anyone."

"I tell you again," BMO replied, its cheery mood gone. "There's a lil kitty, wants to talk to you."

"What, a cat?" Finn sat up a bit. His old bones rose, with great effort, and he stood as he set the banjo down.

BMO nodded its body.

"Hope you're not messing around," Finn warned, his dark eyes crinkling among uncountable webs of crow's feet. Wrapping his beard around his head like he once did with his animal cap (which he'd worn until threads had begun to come off, after which he'd preserved it with ice magic in the cold soil of the treehouse's basement), Finn rises with trembling legs, grabs his banjo, and puts all the weight he can on it. BMO follows him, running ahead of the old man and hitting light switches, lighting torches, doing whatever it needs to to make sure Finn can see.

Finn passes a lot of things on his way down; the box for "Card Wars" tucked underneath an old recipe book of Jake's; the tin suit that the wise dog had made for him so he could get close to Flame Princess when the two were together; mountains of loot the pair fought for on the Infinite Train; coins stamped with the face of the King of Mars; a gifted guitar from Marceline, who was still around and as immortal as ever. It'd been the instrument to, by extension, enlighten him to the awesomeness of the banjo. He hopes she's got someone with her, tonight.

It was no more traumatic a trip than the one he'd made a few hours ago was, or the one a few hours before that. Finn had had the last seventy years to make his peace with the way life had chosen to happen. Life was warm apple pie with cold spots here and there. It was still delicious no matter the temperature. He'd always miss Jake, and Bubblegum, and all the rest of his friends who've kicked it. But why let their absence corrupt what objects he still had that they'd left an impression on? He likes to think he's grown wisdom with his wrinkles.

The rapping on the door is the only thing that guide his sluggish body towards it once he reaches the bottom floor, until BMO found the light. Finn's veiny hand lays a shaky hold on the doorknob. With a slight nervousness he couldn't explain the origin of, he turns it slowly and the door's ramshackle wood surface swings out into the night.

Standing outside, and squinting by the sudden assault of light from the inside of the treehouse, is a small, big-eared cat. Finn might have been a bit hunched over from sheer age, but his feline visitor just barely came up to his knee. His fur was white, eyes small and inquisitive, and his shirt as red as blood. There was an elongated, burlap-looking sack that held something slender, and metal, though Finn couldn't yet tell what it was.

The instant the human appears in the doorway, the little cat-boy's eyes widen and he covers his smile with snow-colored paws. Finn suppresses one of his own.

"Are you . . ." the cat-boy breathes. "Are you Finn Mertens?"

"Sure am, kid."

As soon as the _am_ comes out of Finn's mouth, the little guy takes off, running frantic, hilarity-filled circles around what had been a duck pond decades ago. Finn's confident that the shrill cries of "aw, YEAH!" would've caused any waterfowl still there to take flight and get miffed beyond belief.

Soon his visitor's back, huffing and a little red in the cheeks, but he's suddenly deadly serious. His eyes shut, and he kneels reverently at Finn's knobbly knees.

"Finn the Hero, heir to Billy, savior of Ooo, my name is Shermy. Teach me how to be a hero."

Something blossomed in Finn's heart then; it was intensely warm and at the same time felt like a boulder of ice behind his ribs. Whether it was pride, that he could inspire small-fries in the same way Billy had inspired him; Guilt, that he couldn't train the boy, he might die any day, he could barely walk on his own, and guilt that he'd allow Billy's legacy to be warped so much the legendary hero had been brought down to Finn's level; happiness, that there are still people out there fighting that good fight; or quiet mourning, as he looks down at a furry version of _himself_ from a time that'd long ago followed the sun into the night.

"Listen, dude," Finn begins slowly. "I'm sure you've got mad heart, and there are still lots of dinguses out there that need to get smacked down. But . . ." he scoffs. "Look at me. I'm all knobbly and creaky. I'm old."

" _And_?" Shermy shoots back. "What? Did you get all bitter like Billy, too? Age never stopped him!"

Finn sighs, turning his gaze away from Shermy for a moment. "No, I'm not. I don't got the strength anymore. And it did stop him. I may not have known it but I was there when it turned out he'd gotten clipped. I _saw_ Lich underneath Billy. He got all lazy."

Shermy turned around, letting his sack face his idol for a moment, and from his place in the rectangle of light from the door, Finn could hear the boy utter curses that would've made Golb himself shiver. What exactly did Shermy expect him to say?

"So you'd have the whole globbing world blame you for letting the same globbing thing happen to Ooo's heroes?"

The human was about to respond, about to knit his eyebrows with a needle of indignation, but Shermy just kept talking.

"We're all here! We're all over Ooo, doing good, smackin' dinguses! But we need a Billy, someone to point us the right way."

Finn looks away again, focusing on a particular scar on the doorframe. The icy heat in his chest had just poofed away, replaced by one prolonged throb of shame. "I can't do it, man. I could keel over any day now."

"That's never been a big thing for heroes, has it?"

Shermy's eyes narrow in disdain, and he turns on his heels. The tiny cat-boy goes plodding off into the pink-skied night with firm, angry footfalls. The clasp on his sack comes looser and looser with every stomp until-

 _Clink!_

Finn freezes in place, memory rushing in on him like an incensed nurse, unwrapping bandages from his soul, unveiling images of Fern desiccating into shreds of moist moss, standing in Prismo's Time Room and vaporizing a clone of himself that only _was_ in his sleep.

Now, he looks upon the blade the dust of his other self had gravitized into. On the blue blades of grass outside the treehouse lies the _Finn Sword._

Finn runs to it with a speed he'd not seen from himself in years, spurned by the past calling him to come find it. He feels fresh and invigorated, like he's filled with young agency that'd been unknown to him for decades. No spasms echo in his nerves as he picks the sword up. The blade's still slender and light, not unwieldy at all. It's perfect. He swings the sword once or twice, and its like greeting an old friend. But even so, one of his wandering eyes catches the gem in the sword's guard, where the spirit of his double had lived on and given him advice. It's dark. No one's home.

Maybe it's not quite like meeting an old friend again.

Finn keeps swinging, letting his eyes close all on their own. If he focuses really hard, he can almost feel Jake at his side, his fists inflated to the size of cars, swatting aside demons and monsters and all the world's cares.

What would he do, presented with Shermy and his request?

It _feels_ like a long time before Finn drags himself back to the present and notice Shermy watching him, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. When Finn speaks next, it's a little raspy, but tender. Now he understands the fire in the cat-boy's heart. Now it's all in perspective.

"Where'd you find this?" He asks.

Now it's Shermy's turn to look away from Finn, blushing a bit and darting his small eyes all around. "T-There's this tree further into the Grasslands, one a friend of mine and I visit a lot," he says. "Not to do anything dinky! We just climb and hang out and stuff! But, one day, we climbed to to the top, and it's a _big_ tree, dude. It was just . . . there, stuck in the bark."

Finn chuckles. "Well, had ta get out of there somehow. How'd you do it?"

Shermy leaps towards him, and in a motion that was surprisingly fluid for a kid with limbs that stubby, snatches the sword from Finn's hands. Even without it, Finn didn't feel the vitality it had gifted him with leave him. "Like that!" Shermy says. "Just pulled that sucker out!"

"What, you? All on your own?"

"Well, I- y'know- Yeah I had help, so what? I coulda done it all on my loneself!"

"I believe you, bud." Finn smiles, Shermy's rascally boasting reminding him of someone he knew _really_ well. His fingers felt warm as he offered his hand to the cat-boy, grinning. "You know where that sword came from, Shermy?" he asks.

His companion shrugs. "Nah, just like a cool one when I see it is all." Finn feels the soft pads of a cat paw on his scarred palm. That, and some deeper tickle of relenting, just makes him want to laugh.

"Me too," he says softly. "Me too. Say, Shermy, I could always tell you the story of this baby." He points to the Finn Sword. "And maybe we can talk about hero stuff. I bet you could make me a great one in no time."

The lights still burn as Finn leads Shermy into the treehouse by the paw. He takes one last look behind him, at Ooo's insects just starting to lantern through the hills, at the gash in the ground the Finn Sword had cut as Shermy lugged it behind him. "Just for a night, yeah? I can have BMO call your bro in the morning."

"Sounds fine to me."

Finn nods to himself, chin held up high.

"One more thing, Shermy."

"Yeah?"

"What time is it?"


End file.
